"The Nicholson Revival" by Leslie Holmes

 This month our 31 Days of Prayer and Fasting is on Revival.  Each week I am sharing a story about a Revival or Spiritual Awakening that occurred.  Here is another one as told by Leslie Holmes, Contributing Editor of Preaching magazine and the former MOderator of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.

W. P. Nicholson came back home to Northern Ireland in 1923 after a spell in the United States. Nicholson was a straight-shooting preacher who called for an increased zeal among Christians and saw a large number of conversions. What started out as a weekend guest preaching spot in a local congregation ended up being a nine-month nightly preaching marathon in the largest soccer stadium in the country.  Thousands, including my maternal grandfather, were converted. The bars were emptied out and peace that lasted for more than 40 years came to a divided country.

As a result of the "Nicholson revival," as local historians call it, a warehouse needed to be built on the grounds of the Belfast Shipyard of Harland and Wolff to accommodate the stolen tools and materials that newly converted and repenting shipyard workers returned, confessing their sins and asking forgiveness.  So much material was brought back that Harland and Wolff finally ran a one-page announcement in the Belfast Telegraph saying, in effect, that workers should not return any more materials and tools because there was not enough room to store them.

"If you have tools and materials that you took without permission, you are forgiven," the advertisement said. That building, still standing today, is called "The Nicholson Shed" after the preacher. I've seen the Nicholson Shed.  My father-in-law, a shipyard employee, was in it on a number of occasions when he worked at the shipyard. Not long before he died, told me about the things that were in there.

That is what I mean when I say our country needs revival.  America needs a revival of Scriptural knowledge, genuine repentance, practical obedience to the Word of God, and vital piety. We need to see preachers become bolder in their pulpits, church members become more faithful in their living, and a country that understands we will not be truly the United States until our "God is the Lord" as the psalmist says in Psalm 33:12.